Software Effort & Schedule Measurement: A Framework for Counting Staff-hours and Reporting Schedule Information

Wolfhart B. Goethert
Elizabeth K. Bailey
Mary B. Busby

Technical Report
CMU/SEI-92-TR-021

This report and the methods in it are outgrowths of work initiated by the Effort and Schedule Subgroup of the Software Metrics Definition Working Group. It contains guidelines and advice from software professionals. It is not a standard, and it should not be viewed as such. Nevertheless, the frameworks and recommendations it presents give a solid basis for constructing and communicating clear definitions for some important measures that can help all of us plan, manage, and improve our software projects and processes. We hope that the materials we have assembled will give you a solid foundation for making your effort and schedule measures repeatable, internally consistent, and clearly understood by others. We also hope that some of you will take the ideas illustrated in this report and apply them to other measures, for no single set of measures can ever encompass all that we need to know about software products and processes.